Language learners who lack confidence in their ability to participate successfully in oral
interaction often listen in silence while others do the talking. One way to encourage such learners
to begin to participate is to help them build up a stock of minimal responses that they can use in
different types of exchanges. Such responses can be especially useful for beginners. Minimal
responses are predictable, often idiomatic phrases that conversation participants use to indicate
understanding, agreement, doubt, and other responses to what another speaker is saying. Having
a stock of such responses enables a learner to focus on what the other participant is saying,
without having to simultaneously plan a response.